Bulldogs Continue Educational Efforts via ELI Africa

Lexy Adams (top) and Jordan Forney and Emily Standish (bottom) are three of more than a dozen Yale varsity student-athletes who have worked for ELI Africa, a program started by former Yale football player Vedant Seeam.

Jul 18, 2012

Program Founded by Former Yale Football Player Vedant
Seeam ‘11

MAURITIUS - Every summer since 2010, a
contingent of Yale students -- many of them varsity athletes -- has
traveled to Mauritius, a small island of the coast of Africa with a
population of about 1.3 million people. The Bulldogs are drawn
there to spend two months working on experiential learning
projects, helping the country’s underprivileged children
“learn by doing”. The program, Experiential Learning
Initiative (ELI) Africa, was started by a former Yale football
player.

The man behind ELI Africa is Vedant Seeam
’11, a native of Mauritius who was a defensive
lineman for the Bulldogs. The organization has had more than a
dozen Yale varsity student-athletes work for it in the past three
years, helping Seeam realize his vision of developing free, locally
relevant educational programs that aid personal development
and nurture creativity and self-expression.

Seeam grew up in the farming village of Plaine des Roches. After
graduating from high school, he was elected Vice-Chairman of
Finance of his district -- becoming the youngest-elected politician
in the country. Seeam was also a member of the Mauritian National
Team in badminton, but after arriving at Yale in 2006 he saw
another sport for the first time: football. He took to it quickly,
earning a letter as a sophomore in 2007. His connection to that
sport would eventually help bring three other Yale football players
to Mauritius to work for ELI Africa.

Grateful for the opportunities and quality of education that he
experienced at Yale, Seeam sought ways to bring those elements back
to people in his home country. During his junior year he began
conducting research and fundraising. He then took a year off from
school to work on the organization. Initially known as HOPE Inc.
(Helping Orphans Prosper through Education), ELI Africa became
registered as a 501c3 non-profit organization in the United
States.

In the summer of 2010 the organization launched its “ELI
Fellows Summer Program”, bringing six Yale undergraduates
(four of them varsity student-athletes) to Mauritius. The program
has continued each summer since. In 2011, ELI Africa built on the
success of the previous year by opening the first ELI Africa
Education Center in the village of Pamplemousses.

For eight weeks, the ELI Fellows work with Mauritian
schoolchildren for several hours each week. In addition to teaching
classes such as “Creative Writing” and “Applied
Theater”, the fellows’ work extends beyond the
classroom. That has included projects to counteract the
deforestation of Mauritius’ mangrove trees, raise awareness
of the country’s burgeoning Type II diabetes epidemic and
improve educational programs for special needs students. There are
also sport programs and health classes.

Former Yale women’s ice hockey player Lauren Davis
’12 described one recent educational exercise,
“The Great Egg Drop”, on the ELI Africa blog:

I gave [the students] toilet paper rolls, sponges, paper and
tape and told them they had to create a package for an egg that we
would then drop off of the roof. I gave them 5 minutes to
create a plan and then handed out the supplies. I was nervous
that none of the eggs would break from the look of the packages,
and let’s be honest, it’s really no fun if all the eggs
survive. I had every group name their package, one was even
named Paul, and then we proceeded outside to drop some eggs!!
The first one broke, egg juice was running through the newspaper.
The second one broke too. I got nervous that no eggs would
survive! That would be no fun either. Finally we had a
survivor. Another casualty later and then another
survivor! It was really great to see how excited the students
got about the surviving eggs and I told them at the end of class if
there were any activities they wanted to do again to let me
know. I suspect this might make a repeat appearance.

In addition to the fellows program, ELI Africa now also includes
the ELI Scholars program, in which members of Yale’s graduate
and professional schools work with the ELI Fellows on development
of new projects. Another program, the ELI Corps, enables students
and graduates from Mauritian universities to instruct and mentor
secondary school students.

Seeam is CEO of ELI Africa, and the managing board also includes
another Yale varsity student-athlete in Chief Program Officer
Lexy Adams. A rising senior on the Yale field
hockey team, Adams is working on expanding and improving the
fellows program while also kicking off the new yearlong
program.